The present technology relates to a zoom lens and an imaging apparatus. More particularly, the present technology relates to a wide-angle zoom lens suitable for an imaging lens system of a lens-interchangeable camera system and an imaging apparatus using the wide-angle zoom lens.
In recent years, a lens-interchangeable digital camera system has rapidly become widespread. In particular, a lens-interchangeable digital camera system that does not include any quick-return mirror in a main body of the camera, which is called a mirrorless digital camera, has been attracting attention. The mirrorless camera system have the common feature that a distance (back focus) between a lens arranged closest to an image side and an imaging element is shorter than that of a reflex camera system of the related art. The mirrorless camera system can make the back focus shorter than a lens for the reflex camera system of the related art, so that there is a demand that an imaging lens, particularly, a wide-angle lens makes the entire optical length shorter than the lens for the reflex camera.
As such a wide-angle lens, there has been proposed a wide-angle zoom lens including, in order from an object side, a negative first lens group, a positive second lens group, a positive third lens group, and a negative fourth lens group (for example, see Japanese Patent Application Laid-open Nos. 2010-176097 and 2005-106878).